Cloud-based content management services and platforms have influenced the way personal and corporate electronically stored information objects (e.g., files, images, videos, etc.) are stored, and has also impacted the way such personal and corporate content is shared and managed. One benefit of using such cloud-based systems is the ability to securely share content among trusted collaborators on a variety of user devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptop computers, desktop computers, and/or other devices. Certain cloud-based platforms might further provide document creation applications for such user devices so as to allow the collaborators to create and/or edit documents within the cloud-based platform, thus facilitating real-time sharing. Other applications might also be provided to facilitate other types of peer-to-peer collaboration, such as collaboration activities pertaining to real-time over-the-Internet communications (e.g., on-line chatting), online gaming (e.g., massively multiplayer online gaming), etc. In such situations, the reliability and/or security of the networks accessible by the collaborator nodes (e.g., user devices) can vary wildly. For example, one collaborator node might be connected to an enterprise intranet protected by a firewall, while another collaborator node might be connected to an unreliable public Internet router serving wireless connections.
Unfortunately, legacy approaches to creating and/or managing the peer-to-peer collaborator connections and/or networks for the foregoing environments can be limited at least as pertaining to scalability, efficiency, and/or other factors. For example, such legacy approaches might designate one or more central servers to create and manage the connections among peers. These legacy approaches do not scale well. For example, geographically distributed systems will need to coordinate nodes that may be networked to various central servers across multiple data centers. This requires each central server to maintain a consensus of the nodes that are currently connected, the central servers associated with each node, and/or other connection attributes. Such legacy approaches further require each node to maintain a persistent open connection to the central server, which can precipitate problems with handling large volumes of collaborators and/or maintaining compliance with certain privacy and/or regulatory rules. Other legacy peer-to-peer connection approaches implementing short-range user device tethering (e.g., using Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.) are also deficient in the same and other ways.
What is needed is a technique or techniques to improve over legacy and/or over other considered approaches. Some of the approaches described in this background section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.